While competitors Intel and Nvidia are racing off to make smartphone and tablet chips, AMD is standing steadfast to the PC market, announcing today updates to its C- and E-series processors for laptop and desktop PCs.

Besides enhanced HD graphics and performance boosts, the updated APUs offer a significant 12 hours of resting battery life -- nearly four hours improvement over previous chips, according to AMD's press release. This means laptop users can have their laptops on and idle for longer than previously without needing them plugged into a the wall.

It's noteworthy that AMD isn't chasing after the tablet market but focusing on the ultrathin-and-light laptop market. AMD's chief marketing officer Nigel Dessau told VentureBeat: "I'm not convinced there is a tablet market yet. I know there is an iPad market."

Explaining why AMD isn't going into the smartphone business, he added, "The tablet and smartphone markets are already very crowded. No one really wants to run a DX11 (with high-end PC graphics) game on a smartphone for yet. So for us, there isn't a good differentiated value proposition yet."